Forget the striking librarians and a looming conflict with inside workers. These are short-term issues. Mayor Rob Ford and Toronto city council have 24 hours to rescue themselves from making a problematic long-term transit decision that will shape the city for the next half century, even longer.

For starters, it is now patently obvious that Toronto is not ready for the dramatic make-or-break vote that is scheduled for city council on Wednesday. All sides, from the Mayor on down, need to pull back. The decision over whether to extend the Sheppard subway underground east to Scarborough Centre or build an LRT line down the middle of Sheppard to Morningside must be put off.

Only aficionados of perpetual short-term political wrangling and situation-comedy story lines could see any merit in the current trajectory of the city’s transit file.

It’s a debate populated by a bombastic Mayor who refuses to compromise, a left-wing council cabal that has a long-term anti-car agenda and a short-term objective of humiliating the Mayor, and various politicians in alternating states of ideological confusion.

The Toronto Transit Commission, long part of the comedy, has a swinging-door board of directors with in-and-out politicians in control and a new TTC chief executive whose views on subway versus LRT are under wraps.

The provincial government’s MetroLinx is a bureacratic facade to hide the McGuinty Liberals’ true role in setting policy. It created the move to LRT by waving an $8.5-billion spend-it-or-lose-it subsidy for small parts of a massive transit strategy — nicknamed The Big Move — that would cost maybe $100-billion to complete in some never-never future.

No serious LRT-subway cost-benefit economic studies have been conducted, despite the report from an “expert advisory panel” last week. Set up by council, it was stacked to produce its pre-ordained conclusions and should have accurately been called the Expert Advisory Panel Established to Endorse LRT Along Sheppard.

The only expert on the panel — in existence for five weeks — was Eric Miller, a civil engineer who heads the University of Toronto Cities Centre. He has a great CV, but there were no economists on the panel, no financial experts in private funding of public projects or transit operations, no builders.

As a result, the report failed to review how the cost of building subways could be brought down by using private-sector builders and designers rather than the high-cost TTC approach. Some say as much as $1-billion could be shaved off the $3.7-billion capital cost of a Sheppard subway.

The panel supported the LRT option on environmental grounds even though a subway would result in almost 60% more annual TTC riders (12.1 million), fewer car trips (10.1-million) and lower greenhouse gas emissions. In an absurd calculation, the panel divided these benefits by the total cost of a subway and concluded they were too high on a per unit basis.

There was little mention of the frequent sluggishness of LRT travel. A 2009 report by the consulting firm Steer Davies Gleave said it would take the Sheppard LRT 40 minutes to make its way from Morningside to the first Sheppard subway stop at Don Mills. But it might be a lot longer, it warned. “The operational reliability of the route will vary. Even with significant signal priority there will be delays in road intersections from cross-traffic, congestion and accidents…on the order of 10%, which on the proposed route could provide a variation in journey time of about 4-5 minutes.” This slowdown in travel time in turn “may result in different headways (time between cars), which at peak times can increase the dwell times of vehicles at busy stops and further increase travel time.”

How’s that for a sales pitch?

The same applies to the Finch line — another LRT that would, if built, remain in place as a slow-moving traffic staller for 50 years, likely longer. Subways are forever, and so are LRTs. Once in place, there will be not going back.

Two council moves would be appropriate. One would be a call for a rigorous economic and business review of the costs and benefits of LRT versus subway, including consultation with private finance and construction sectors.

Another move might come from the Mayor to acknowledge that maybe the subway option he favours will require tax funding of one form or another. That would mark a major rhetorical climbdown by Mr. Ford, but it would be a minor political concession given that all public transit in the city is already funded by tax dollars.

These may be bad ideas for no-tax conservtives, but let’s face it: LRT backers on council are going to be the leading proponents of road tolls and parking fees as soon as the LRTs are in place.

In making a case for delaying the Sheppard decision pending funding and cost reviews, Mr. Ford can point to the provincial government’s Drummond Report, which called for engaging citizens in “an open, public dialogue on how best to create new revenue sources for future transportation needs.”

No such dialogue has taken place, and no transit decision should be taken before it has.

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